I’ve been recommended this book a few times on different podcasts and YouTube channels. It’s been on my Amazon wish list for a while and I finally got around to reading it.

It’s so interesting because a lot of my prior reading is about men-women relationships in society and female psychology. I haven’t actually read a book that’s totally focused on masculinity and how men bond together in our modern age.

As I’ve been getting older, I’ve noticed how many of our close male friendships mainly developed in childhood. The older you get, the more rare it becomes to discover a new best friend and to even make friends period. A lot of my guy friends have echoed similar sentiments.

This book gets into the raw and real reason that men bond together, how they influence society, and your value as a man. As the book says:

“Masculinity is about being a man within a group of men. Above all things, masculinity is about what men want from each other.”

I think it’s pretty well documented how and why females become attracted to YOU. There is a formula behind it. You can do things like state pumping, breaks in rapport, and use sub-communications to get the result you’re looking for.

What’s not so well documented is how to become popular in a male group and create loyalty within a tribe of men. That’s what this book aims to answer.

Check out The Way Of Men on Amazon

My Notes

• So many groups of men who want so many different things from men. Think wealthy class, religion, state, etc.
• Must define in-group out-group. Who in your group would be willing to fight, defend, or steal from others.
• Due to biological differences and female reproductive context, men would be charged with hunting, exploring, fighting, building, and defending. Men won’t get pregnant.
• When men compete or status and win, their bodies give them dopamine and testosterone high.
• Practical division of labor is where male world begins.
• Leader creates synergy, reduce distractions, avoid conflicts. Make men work together.
• Cooperative hunting is more effective than when alone.
• Men rarely move from gang to gang (are loyal), though females do.
• Smaller groups are tightest and most stable.
• In smaller groups, men are more loyal to eachother.
• Unhesitatingly risk lives for anyone in platoon or company. After that, sentiment drops off. Common goals or identity is more theoretical.
• Group of 2 – 15 men is a comfort zone.
• Perimeter separates men you trust from those you don’t.
• Try to avoid having men have separate identities or they might put above the group.
• Experiment – group of boys created us vs. them and negative caricatures of the other group.
• Men need to know they can depend on you (weakness, fear, incompetence can get them killed).
• Men who are good at the job of being men earn respect and trust of the group.
• Men respond to and admire the qualities that would make men useful and dependable in an emergency.
• “Men who don’t care about what the other men think of them aren’t dependable or trustworthy. If you’re smart, you will want the other men to prove they are committed to the team. You’ll want them to show that they care about their reputation within the gang, and you’ll want them to show that they care about your gang’s reputation with other gangs.”
• Strength, courage, mastery, and honor.
• Men will challenge each-other to test courage, but it prepares you for intergroup competition.
• Man’s reputation may keep others from messing with him or enemies from thinking twice. Why honor is important.
• A woman is not considered less womanly if she is physically weak.
• Strength is the ability to exert one’s will over oneself, over nature and over other people.
• Courage implies risk. Danger or failure. Measured against danger. Greater the danger, the greater the courage.
• It is not the strongest man who will necessarily lead, it is the man who takes the lead who will lead.
• You must have courage to assert your interests over the interests of other groups of men, because of potential threat of violence. To what extent are you willing to press your interests.
• If I push, will he give way. Risk to advance your own interest = balls. Absolute commitment to the fight in the face of pain, disfigurement, until death.
• If you can treat another man like he is your kid brother, you are the alpha. Man with more push. Others will yield to him because they don’t have as much fight.
• Vocals/body language. Create a sense that you are ready to push as hard as necessary to get what you want is a way to establish authority.
• Masculine men make it clear that they are to be taken seriously, that they have weight, that they won’t be pushed around.
• In a gang of men, courage is esteemed and revered in the dead.
• Courage is will to risk harm to benefit oneself or others. Decisive willingness.
• Rare for a woman to volunteer to support a man without resentment.
• Competency is crucial to a man’s mental health and senes of his own worth.
• A child is a child, but an incompetent adult is a beggar.
• Mastery is a man’s desire and ability to cultivate and demonstrate proficiency and expertise in technics that aid in the exertion of will over himself, over nature, over women, and over other men.
• People will leave you alone if they fear harm from you. If men give way to you because they fear you, you gain status.
• It is tactically advantageous to cultivate a reputation for strength, willingness to fight, and technical mastery.
• Honor = general esteem, deference, or respect.
• Honor has always been about the esteem of groups of men.
• Showing concern for the respect of your peers is a show of loyalty and indication of belonging.
• Appearance of weakness or submissiveness invites other men to assert their interests over your own.
• Lack of strength, courage, or mastery are the men men don’t want to be.
• Flamboyantly dishonorable man seeks attention for something that the male group doesn’t value or which isn’t appropriate at a given time.
• Effeminate body language communicates submissiveness.
• Honor is desire to be seen as asset, not liability.
• Gangsters = status, aggressive, tactical, ballsy, brotherhood. Good at being men, not good men.
• Good at being a man – guy you’d want on your team.
• Men of ideas and men of action have much to learn from each other.
• Man who is more concerned with being a good man than being good at being a man is a well-behaved slave. Easy to manage. Tactically inept.
• Men gather in bands and form a strong identity. Belonging to the gang, identifying the enemy.
• Emotionally invested in the group. Need to read more on a check to civilization.
• Simulated masculinity (sports, police, military, gaming). Primal aggression, competitiveness, and the need to prove to the group are channeled through participation.
• Vicarious masculinity. Watching sports. Study history of males. Stories about males (movies, books).
• Intellectualized masculinity. Economic aggression (sales/biz). Political or ideological aggression. Philosophical debate. Academic debate.
• Metaphorical masculinity. Self-mastery. Impulse control. Turn masculinity inwards. Family. Create. Invent. Achieve goals.
• Ascetic masculinity – self mastery and self disciplined. More about self-denial and discipline.
• As society progresses, men get to feel like men through these other channels, but the threat that men pose to order, to established interests and the interests of women is mitigated.
• Introduction of women into a field of competition short-circuits its viability as a substitute for male gang activity.
• The goal of civilization seems to be to eliminate work and risk, but the world has changed more than we have. Our bodies crave work and sex, our minds crave risk and conflict.
• Women tend to prefer and be more satisfied with safe and fun risk simulation, while men long for real competition, real risk, and the potential for real status gain.
• “How long will men be satisfied to replay and reinvent the conflict dramas of the past through books and movies and games, without the hope of experiencing any meaningful conflict in their own lives? When will we grow tired of hearing the stories of great men long dead?”
• Idleness of civilized life. Males are stronger, have greater tendency to take risk, and have grater drive to master the world around them (aptitude).
• Modern men are lacking initiation into manhood and meaningful trials of strength and courage. Few modern men know themselves as well as their forefathers.
• “Like every civilization, it must be built on the backs of men, and most of them must agree to abide by and enforce its laws.”
• Strength requires opposing force. Courage requires risk. Mastery requires hard work. Honor requires accountability to other men.
• The Way of Women is to lure men away from the volatile gang, seek his investment in her reproductive endeavor, encourage him to seek refuge and comfort in domesticity. A comfortable man is less likely to take risks, and warriors have always known that too much comfort makes men soft.
• Things that keep men passive and dependent.
• Proximity creates familiarity and shared identity. It creates us. Need to learn how to read each other and work as a group.